Sunday, August 14, 2011

Write On! Human Security & Ethics 50 years after Hammarskjöld

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers)

"Peace Diplomacy, Global Justice and International Agency: Rethinking Human Security and Ethics in the Spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961)" is the title of an upcoming conference for which organizers are now seeking papers.
The 2-day conference will be held the 2d week in November, in the Peace Palace at The Hague, Netherlands. It will begin on the afternoon of November 9 with public debate, "open to the corps diplomatique, the judiciary, academia, students and young professionals," at which International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is a confirmed speaker. The conference will continue with an interdisciplinary meeting on November 10, at which scholars and policymakers will present and discuss papers, which will be considered for publication in a conference volume.
Sponsoring the conference will be the Hague Academic Coalition, a consortium that endeavors to raise awareness and provide support to international institutions, as well as the Grotius Centre at the Hague campus of Leiden University, the International Institute of Social Studies, the Dag Hammarsköld Foundation, and the Swedish Embassy in The Hague.
The conference will mark the passage of a half-century since September 18, 2011. On that day, as we've posted, Hammarskjöld (below right), who'd been U.N. Secretary-General since 1953, died along with 11 other persons in a plane crash in what is now Zambia. (photo credit) He had been en route to negotiate an end to conflict then under way in the Congo.
Conference organizers write Hammarskjöld, posthumous winner of the 1961 Nobel Peace Prize,

advocated a community-based vision of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security. Central to his conception of an effective United Nations was his fundamental belief that states should respect the UN’s institutional neutrality, and so enable it to become an instrument and expression of the international community in pursuit of the Charter’s objectives. For Hammarskjöld, the UN’s primary responsibility was to do everything within its means to protect successive generations from the ravages of war.

Inviting re-examination of Hammarskjöld’s approach to maintaining peace and security, conference organizers write, are developments surround the Arab Spring about which we've posted; in particular:
► U.N. Security Council Resolutions on Libya, with reference to the concept of responsibility to protect; and
► In the course of the Libya situation and others in the region, the interaction of the United Nations with other international actors, such as the International Criminal Court, NATO, the Arab League, and the African Union.
Specific themes on which papers are sought may be found in the full call for papers here. The deadline for submitting to secretariat@haguecoalition.org abstracts -- of no more than 300 words -- is September 1, 2011.